


Who's Been Eating Off My Plate

by CourierNinetyTwo



Series: Goldilocks & The Three Dates (Modern AU) [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 21:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1832851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNinetyTwo/pseuds/CourierNinetyTwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weiss and Yang go on their date. Followup to Who's Been Lying In My Bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who's Been Eating Off My Plate

Weiss’ mouth was on fire.

It was the final embarrassing straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, as everything that could have gone wrong in the last two minutes had done so. Perhaps she should have paid more attention to the fact that when their soup came, the broth in Yang’s bowl was bright red where hers was nearly opaque or noticed that Yang sniffled and sighed after the first bite like her sinuses were being cleared, but the quirk of the blonde’s mouth when their eyes met had made Weiss want to kiss her. Doing so seemed timely, appropriate. The last thing she expected was her tongue to catch on some lingering chili flakes in Yang’s teeth and feel her world shrink down to a whimper of dismay and the start of tears in her eyes.

Drinking water hadn’t helped at all. The heat was clinging to the inside of her mouth like napalm, but it wasn’t until she reached over and stole Yang’s glass that the blonde realized her predicament and waved over their waiter. A few words were exchanged in Mandarin as Yang drew a finger across her throat, her other hand mimicking a drinking motion. Weiss liked to think that she was worldly — she had taken German in high school and French in college, after all — but whatever was being implied escaped her until the server returned with a steaming cup atop a saucer.

“What is that?” Weiss winced at the rasp of her voice.

“ _Dai_ —” Yang hesitated before switching back to English. “Milk tea. It’ll cool you down. Here.”

She was surprised when one tanned arm slid behind her back, much less when Yang picked up the tea and carefully tilted it against her lips. Weiss didn’t usually take well to being coddled, but there was something endearing about the way Yang’s fingers nearly engulfed the cup like it was one size too small. The world itself seemed too small for Yang Xiao Long, who had had to hunch her shoulders to get through the doorway of the restaurant, and kept the sunroof open on her sedan rather than risk her head bumping up against the ceiling.

The tea was oddly sweet, with almost the same consistency as coffee. Even though it was hot, the sting faded from Weiss’ mouth completely and she put her hand over Yang’s, fingertips brushing over scarred knuckles and lines of old black ink, tilting the cup level again.

“I’m fine.” Weiss swallowed again, clearing her throat quietly. “Now that I’ve irrevocably embarrassed myself in front of you.”

Yang shrugged. Even with her considerable frame squeezed into a black t-shirt — the words WORLD CLASS emblazoned on the front — Weiss could see the heavy shift of muscle through the fabric. “I still think I have one up on you with the whole breaking into your apartment drunk and crashing on your couch thing.”

If Yang was so intent to let bygones be bygones, she wasn’t going to linger on her own humiliation any longer than necessary. “What was it you said to the waiter after we ordered the soup? I thought we were getting the same thing, but yours is clearly different.”

“Oh.” Lilac eyes averted, smile turning sheepish. “ _Mei guo ren_.”

Weiss frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Uh, mild.” Yang said, after a moment’s hesitation.

Color flared up to Weiss’ cheeks, warm and pink, prompting Yang to become very interested in eating again. Still, the crisis was averted, and she picked up her wide-mouthed spoon to do the same. It wasn’t until they settled into a comfortable silence that she realized Yang’s hand hadn’t moved from her back, working idle circles near the hem of her shirt. From anyone else, it would have been incredibly presumptuous, but the blonde didn’t seem to be trying to get anywhere in particular. The fact that Yang was compelled to touch her, keep some sort of contact between them, was comforting in a strange way.

Weiss couldn’t remember the last time she felt wanted — not her money, not her name, not for an escape out of some sort of legal jam — just her presence. Even on the drive over to the restaurant, Yang hadn’t brought up her father once, unlike almost everyone else Weiss had the displeasure of speaking with. In the back of her mind, she knew this would outrage him, that he would demand to know why she would flaunt her attraction to someone so undesirable. Never mind how narrow his view of desirability was, nor that he still held out hope she would seek out a ‘respectable’ marriage.

“You like it?” Yang had swapped out her spoon for chopsticks, leaning forward to meet a tangled hunk of noodles with her mouth.

“Yes.” Weiss said, as soon as she finished off a small slice of beef. “It’s great.”

It wasn’t a lie, either. Six dollar soup sounded like a prelude to a culinary nightmare, but the broth was rich, the meat tender on a bed of well-seasoned noodles. Weiss had to wonder why she was paying hand over fist for hand-rolled sushi and artisanal sandwiches when restaurants like this apparently delivered without a surcharge, if the sign taped to the door was to be believed.

“Probably not what you’re used to.” A flicker went through Yang’s bright eyes, almost anxious. To think that someone who looked like she could wrestle a bear and win was worried about her opinion.

“What I’m used to has been boring, predictable, and unsatisfying.” Weiss said simply. “So no, not at all like that.”

“Is this going to be a thing?” Yang set the chopsticks on the rim of her bowl. “Honestly it feels like I’m going to wake up at any second and be mad at myself for fantasizing about kissing a cute lawyer.”

“Well, even including burning off the top layer of my taste buds, this is one of the better dates I’ve gone on in a while.”  _Ever_  might have been more accurate, but Weiss wasn’t keen on advertising just how disastrous her previous attempts were. “Although this is the first time I’ve sat on the same side of the booth with someone like this.”

“Oh.” Yang tilted her head towards the chairs on the opposite side of the table. “Well, this is the comfy side and you can see when your food’s coming. And, uh, well when I stretch out my legs, I usually end up squishing whoever I’m sitting across from. Occupational hazard.”

“From being tall or having to be strong enough to be a bouncer?” Weiss asked. “It’s funny, I suppose I don’t really know that much about you besides your job and…you said something about being on parole.”

“We kind of skipped that part, huh? Both, I guess.” Picking the chopsticks back up, Yang snagged a piece of squid from the bottom of her bowl and popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “I told you about my sister. Our dad raised us by himself, he’s a mechanic. Really not that much to me besides the daily grind.”

“I don’t believe that.” The blonde had so much presence and energy, too much to be distilled down to a couple of statements. “Although I’m not sure I want to ask what you know about me. You recognized my name right away.”

“I read the paper when it’s slow at the door. Your name comes up sometimes, although mostly it’s about the governor and stuff.” Yang smiled. “I don’t expect that journalists scrambling to make a big deadline can tell me more about you than you can, Weiss.”

That was true, of course, but she had never heard it put so forthrightly. “I mostly work. Six days a week is the norm, although I’ve been known to show up for a half-day on Sundays.”

“Damn.” One of Yang’s brows rose nearly to her hairline. “I take extra shifts where I can get them, but that would burn me out.”

“Thankfully I don’t have to wrestle anyone to the ground in order to make them behave. Almost all the contracts I handle are company-to-company or from one corporation to the government. The majority of the effort is making sure everyone’s signatures are on the paperwork. It’s when someone decides to argue last minute for more money that I get called in to smooth things over.”

“The only lawyer I know was my public defender.” Yang shook her head. “He was nice, but he seemed really busy. I took the deal he came up with because my boss at the Arena said he wouldn’t fire me if I had a criminal record, but he’d have to if I went off to prison.”

“Can I ask what you were convicted of?” Maybe there were more delicate ways to phrase the question, but Weiss had to admit she’d been curious ever since Yang had mentioned being on parole. As intimidating as the other woman’s size was, she didn’t come off as violent or unstable.

“Assault.” Yang’s fingers tapped against the table, scars visible across the top of her tattooed knuckles. “I caught a guy spiking someone’s drink and hauled him out. He just laughed and told me he would just go to one of the other bars down the street to ‘score’, so I decked him. Gave him a kick in the balls for good measure. I know I should have let the cops handle it, but I’d seen him at the bar before. Plenty of money to throw around and the charges weren’t going to stick when no one had actually downed the drink.”

While criminal law wasn’t her area of expertise beyond white collar violations, Weiss found that she had to agree. It was incredible how many possession charges slipped through the cracks when the defendant wore a suit instead of a t-shirt. “I would have said he was threatening to inflict bodily harm on your patrons and that you were just doing your job, but there’s a reason I never wanted to climb up the district attorney ladder.”

“I don’t regret it.” Yang shrugged. “Boss put the guy’s picture up in the back and he’s banned for life. I still have my job. Maybe I can’t stop him from getting into every bar in town, but I can at least keep my corner of things safe, you know? Besides, my probation officer loved me.”

“Oh?” Weiss couldn’t help the surprise that crept into that single syllable.

“Valkyrie was pint-size — no offense — but she was built like she could bench press a tank. Usually she checked in on me when I was working out, so after my time was up, we threw the iron around together once in a while.” Digging around in the pocket of her shorts, Yang pulled out her phone. “Turns out she’s married to the guy who runs the twenty-four hour place that’s right next to the bar.”

Weiss looked down at the small, cracked screen when the tap of calloused fingers brought up a picture. A short redheaded woman posed next to Yang in a dark blue shirt that read  _These Guns Should Be Illegal_ , both arms flexed, while the blonde was in a sweat-soaked tank top that was so thin and stretched out it might was well have been tissue paper. Clearing her throat, Weiss forced herself to look away from proof that even a highly pixelated picture couldn’t blur the definition in Yang’s triceps. The fact that one of those powerful arms was against her back right now certainly didn’t help matters.

“I can’t say I have anything half as interesting to share.” Weiss admitted as soon as the phone was put away. “Most of the things I talk about at work every day are under nondisclosure agreements.”

“Why do you do it?” Yang asked. “I mean, you’re around my age, right? Late twenties?”

She nodded. “Twenty-nine.”  

“Huh, me too.” That earned an approving nod. “So right, you’re only twenty-nine but you’ve got a law degree and your own firm. Your apartment kicks ass. I can tell you make bank. Is the six days a week thing for the money?”

“No, not at all.” Weiss’ mouth tensed into a thin line. There was a trust fund she hadn’t touched since law school still in her name, not to mention that she saved scrupulously. Money had never been an issue. “I mean, it pays well, of course. I didn’t want to go to medical school or become a politician and I’ve always been…better with paperwork than people.”

Despite the somewhat pathetic finish, Yang didn’t mock her, only looked curious. “Those were the only three options?”

Dreams of becoming a dancer or a singer lingered all the way through high school, as she possessed a great deal of talent for both, but as soon as college approached, her father had made it clear her ‘childhood hobbies’ weren’t suitable for a long-term career. He appreciated the art in a finely rolled cigar or aged scotch, in the portraits and sculptures that portrayed his visage, but never in her performances. “So it seemed at the time.”

Yang’s palm pressed flat against her back, warm as a brand even though her shirt. “Didn’t mean to bring up anything rough.”

“No, it’s fine.” Weiss let her spoon drop into her bowl, watching it fill with broth. “The truth is that I don’t really have anything else to do with myself but work. I had to spend so much time getting my firm off the ground that by the time I could relax, I found myself without anyone to do the relaxing with. Considering I’d rather be productive than idle…”

“You go back to work instead.” Tilting her head for a moment, Yang’s expression settled on a smile. “Sounds like it was time for someone to drunkenly stumble into your apartment.”

“It’s worked out fairly well so far.” Nonetheless, a touch of nervousness flitted through the pit of Weiss’ stomach. “Although I did have another question.”

Picking up the milk tea, Yang snagged a sip and nodded. “Shoot.”

“Right after you woke up, you mentioned you were trying to get to your ex’s place.” She frowned, drawing up the name from her memory. “Blake. You two aren’t still—”

The moment Yang shook her head, Weiss withheld a sigh of relief. “Blake and I were on and off the last couple years, but we finally tapped out a few months back. Her apartment’s almost as big as yours though, and she’s let me crash in her spare room before. She’s an author, real famous, makes a good buck.”

Despite her regular perusal of the literature-centered section of the paper, Weiss didn’t recognize the name Blake Belladonna. Some of that may have been owed to her having more time to read book reviews than books themselves, though. “What does she write?”

“Her pen name’s Kitty Demure,” Yang chuckled, “like one of those old school femme fatales. All of her stuff’s like — young girl falls in love with a mobster or a woman who gets seduced by a spy — lots of drama, angst, kinky sex.”

Weiss blinked.  _That_  name she knew, although it often appeared on lists that started with Top Ten Guilty Pleasures and Books Not To Read In Public. “And that’s why you broke up?”

“No, no.” That sheepish smile was back in full force. “I never really read Blake’s stuff and she just writes for the money. Her real thing is photography. She goes all over the world to take pictures, spends weeks trying to get the perfect shot. I’ll show you if you pull out your phone. It’s got way better resolution than mine.”

“Oh. Sure.” Buried as it was at the bottom of her purse, a moment of searching turned up her phone. Weiss unlocked the screen with a swipe of her thumb before handing it over.

“I just got tired of not seeing her for months at a time and I didn’t want to freeload off her frequent flyer miles.” Yang’s thumb was surprisingly precise against the digital keyboard, punching a couple of words into the browser search. “We’re still friends, though.”

The concept wasn’t foreign to her, although Weiss couldn’t imagine talking to any of her exes again. Her relationships with men had been short-lived across the board and the soccer player she was involved with in college preferred to keep it as a friends-with-benefits arrangement. As soon as she transferred to law school, it had ended with a text and Weiss had deleted her number. Then again, if Yang could be friends with her probation officer, an ex-girlfriend wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

“Here.” Yang said, passing the phone back.

All of the photos were black and white, fading out into one another as it cycled through a gallery. The site itself was simple, with a slate gray sidebar listing contact information and  _Blake Belladonna // Portfolio_  at the top. Every picture had a caption, detailing ruins throughout Europe, the streets of China and Japan, and landscapes in New Zealand. A few portraits were scattered here and there, but nothing prepared her for the sight of Yang sprawled naked across a plain of grass.

As nudes went, it was certainly tasteful, the blonde lying on her back in six foot plus of tan glory. An arm was thrown over her eyes, concealing them from the bright sky, the other limp against the sculpted hollow of her hip, fingers angled towards thick, muscular thighs. Shadows cast between both legs gave modesty where clothes provided none, and while the title of the picture —  _The Sun Comes Down To Icarus_  — was thoroughly pretentious, Weiss couldn’t help but think Yang’s hair, free of restraint and curls left wild, would shine like gold if the photo was in color.

“Shit.” Violet eyes went wide. “I forgot that one was on there, sorry.”

Weiss clearly her throat quietly. “Are there a lot of these?”  
  
“Kind of. I was a cheap model since all Blake had to do was buy me lunch. None of it’s porn or anything like that, though.”

It was a miracle Weiss didn’t blush, considering her immediate thought was that happened to be a shame. “It’s a beautiful photo.”

With her finger easing off the screen, the gallery swapped to the next picture, which was also of Yang, albeit dressed this time in a tank top and workout pants. It was a shot from behind, simply titled  _Champion_  with her facing a mirror, forcing a steel bar laden with plates up over her head, back and shoulders straining from exertion. The first of a trilogy, it seemed;  _Champion 2_  and  _3_  showed Yang wrapping her hands with tape and shadowboxing, respectively.

As soon as the photos refreshed back to the first landscape, Weiss closed the browser and dropped the phone back into her purse, making a mental note to bookmark the site later. “Do you really fight on the weekends?”

“Yeah, if there’s a heavyweight match scheduled.” Yang smiled. “It’s a good time. Gets the blood pumping and if there’s enough betters, my boss pays out prize money. An extra two hundred in my pocket never hurts.”

Even though the slight asymmetrical tilt to the bridge of Yang’s nose suited her, Weiss would have charged far, far more to allow someone to punch her in the face, much less shattering her nose so many times it no longer set properly. “Besides slapping an ex-boyfriend, I’ve never hit anyone. Kind of surreal to think you can get paid for it.”

“You should come down to the bar and watch me go a round. My record’s five wins and one loss for the year already. Not sure if it’s second date material, but I think you’d have fun.” Yang said.

“You—” She hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up, only to have them dashed, “—you’d want a second date?”

“Yeah.” Yang’s hand slid up her back to encircle her shoulders. “I mean, if you want to.”

“If you’re paying for this one, then I get to choose where we go next.” Weiss countered.

“Deal.” After getting out her wallet, Yang plucked out a twenty and nudged the bill underneath her water cup. “You’ll have to warn me if I need to dress up, though. I stay pretty casual unless I’m at work.”

Mulling the idea over for a moment, Weiss recalled there was a seafood restaurant right on the bay only a few minutes from her apartment. While the menu was fairly pricy, the dress code was liberal, encouraging patrons to share huge buckets of crab and pitcher-sized cocktails. She had gone there with a few other lawyers after passing the bar, and then spent the rest of the weekend laying on the floor of her shower in between bouts of vomiting from a truck-sized hangover, but it had been fun. A last hurrah before six years behind desks and boardroom tables, now that she was thinking of it.

“You won’t have to.” When Yang slipped out of the booth, she slid the strap of her purse over her shoulder and moved to follow. “Are you allergic to seafood?”

The other woman’s eyes lit up. “Nah, no allergies. My dad always said I was healthy as an ox.”

There was a quick exchange with their server on their way out, a flurry of syllables and hand gestures that Weiss couldn’t even begin to pick apart. Whatever was said made both of them smile before there was a goodbye in English and Yang pushed the door open, stepping past the threshold into the bright afternoon sun.

“Should I ask what that was about?” Weiss mused.

Yang let out a warm, low laugh. “He asked if I knew any cute Chinese girls who dressed like you so he could date one and get his mother off his back.”

She glanced down, suddenly a bit self-conscious. Her blouse was simple and white with three-quarter sleeves, the pencil skirt she chose a few inches shorter than the ones she usually wore to the office, but nothing terribly remarkable. A small silver apple hung from a thin chain draped around her throat; perhaps it had been that or the diamond watch bound to her wrist. The latter had been a graduation gift from her father; for all their spats, Weiss accepted the gift with grace.

“Trust me, it was meant as a compliment.” Eyes scanning for her car, Yang spotted it at the end of the street, pulling out her keys as they started walking down the sidewalk. “You want me to drop you back at your place?”

It was a bit of a drive and some of the noises Yang’s sedan made were questionable, but Weiss didn’t want to say goodbye quite yet. “If you don’t mind.”

“No problem. I don’t have to be at the Arena until six.” A trio of chirps sounded when Yang pressed the button on the little remote, unlocking all the doors. Considering the sunroof had been open the entire time, Weiss wasn’t entirely sure locking it would prevent the car from being stolen unless the thief was particularly lazy.

Once they were settled into the seats, Yang started the engine and flipped the dial for the air conditioning all the way to the left. The air that initially blew out was warm, but even the artificial breeze from the vents was better than sitting in still, humid air. Weiss winced when she buckled her seatbelt, even the plastic hot to the touch. Summers in the city were supposed to be rather mild, but she found them just as miserable as anywhere else.

“You want to try again?” Yang asked, hand adjusting the central mirror a couple of centimeters.

Weiss frowned. “Try what?”

“Kissing me. Except without the part where I taste like a five-alarm fire.”

That explained why Yang had been drinking the tea too. Rather than pressing her luck with a protest, Weiss leaned over from her seat, although the restraint of the seatbelt meant she had to be met halfway. She was, the warmth of Yang’s mouth welcome even with the sun bearing down on them from overhead. Usually this was the part where she overthought things, how long she should linger, how much contact was being too eager, but the moment Yang’s tongue parted her lips, Weiss melted into the kiss, one hand grasping at the front of the blonde’s dark shirt.

“This was the first date, wasn’t it?” She murmured.

The question earned an amused hum. “Mmhmm.”

“Good.” Weiss said.

Her teeth nipped at Yang’s lower lip, tilting her head to resume and deepen the kiss as a calloused palm cupped her jaw. There was no telling how long it went on, the exchange slow but exhilarating — Weiss wasn’t sure if she had ever been kissed to the point of going breathless before — but when a horn blared loudly behind them, she jerked back, turning to look over her seat and see who was being so utterly rude.

A man in a red car was a few feet back, gesturing furiously to the parking meter beside Yang’s sedan and presumably the space itself. Weiss bared her teeth and flipped him off, surprised when Yang promptly burst into laughter, slowly turning the steering wheel to ease out onto the street.

“You shouldn’t reward people for lacking common decency, Yang.” Weiss muttered, shifting to face forward again.

“There’s only two minutes left on the meter anyway and parking down here is shit. If you really want to make out, I’d rather do it at your apartment since,” Yang rapped her fist against the dashboard, “your air conditioning actually works.”

Lovely as that sounded, she had seen the amount of unread emails on her phone when they were in the restaurant; once they tipped over into the dozens, Weiss knew that something had gone awry at the firm and everyone in her employ was scrambling to cover their asses for when she came into the office. Even without any plans to do so until tomorrow, she had to be informed as to whatever was going on and that meant reading every dry, rambling paragraph from Bertram and the short but misspelled counterarguments from Whick to find out how things were being handled in her absence.

“Unfortunately I probably have memos to prepare, if not an entire case file. Two days off is enough to make the cats I’ve herded start climbing the walls.” Weiss sighed, glancing out the window and following the far line of the horizon.

“Second date material, then.” With the sunroof open, wind whipped through Yang’s hair as soon as they reached the speed limit on the freeway, blowing it back over the top of her seat in a wild blonde mass.

“How can you stand to have your hair that long?” Weiss asked. “Doesn’t it get in the way of everything?”

“Sometimes. Makes a braid as thick as my arm whenever I have to pull it back, but I’ve had it long since I was a kid. I can’t imagine ever cutting it.” A smile tugged at the corner of Yang’s mouth. “Your pixie cut’s really cute, though. Suits you.”

Brushing one pale lock behind her ear, Weiss couldn’t help but return the smile. “I used to have it down to my hips when I danced, since it was a fairly distinctive look. When law school came around, though, I just didn’t have the time to deal with that much maintenance.”

“Makes sense.” Switching into the far right lane, Yang made a sharp turn, zipping around the exit that led towards her neighborhood. “When you think you’ll be free next?”  
  
“I honestly don’t know.” She was used to taking days off when she was about to drop from exhaustion, not keeping a consistent schedule of free time. As head of the firm, technically she could leave whenever she damn well pleased, but it would upset a lot of clients to do so on a whim. “A week or so, probably.”

“Toss me a text, then?” Yang asked.

“Sure.” It should have been comforting for control to be passed back to her, but Weiss felt another bubble of nervousness rise up. She wanted the second date to go as well as the first, broth incident aside, and if her choice in restaurants wasn’t up to snuff—taking a deep breath to slow that particular train of thought down, the hand that had clenched into a fist in her lap relaxed back against her thigh. “This is going to sound horrifically insecure, but you really enjoyed lunch?”

Brow knitting, Yang glanced her way before returning full attention to the road. “Yeah. I mean, it’s been a couple years since I’ve had to play the dating game. I didn’t have any idea if you were going to wake up this morning and change your mind. I’m glad you didn’t though.”

Nice to know they were on the same sort of footing in that regard, even if had been because Yang was in another relationship. “We have almost nothing in common.”

The comment was met with a noncommittal shrug. “On the surface, maybe. And even if that’s true, keeps things interesting.”

“You have an uncanny ability to frame everything positively.” Weiss said, shaking her head a little. “I’ve met plenty of people who would take the deck being stacked against them on a very personal level.”

“You should meet my sister. Ruby sees some horrible shit on the job, but she’s always hyped whenever we talk on the phone or she comes to visit. Just how we were raised, maybe. Dad took care of us by himself after Ruby’s mom left and two kids on a mechanic’s salary doesn’t go as far as it should when he had to take time off for our school stuff and everything.”

That left the question as to where Yang’s mother was, although Weiss didn’t feel right asking just yet. Her parents had divorced when she was barely five, her mother remarrying a few years later and moving to another state. She had a good deal of seething over that as a teenager, but later had come the realization that any attempt to sue for custody would be crushed in an instant by her father, likely with some sort of revenge to boot. Even before he was governor, his ego could have dwarfed the capitol building.

“You never thought about becoming a police officer?” Weiss asked, keen to shift the subject. “They’re more lenient about punching would-be date rapists when you have a badge to wave around.”

“By the time I was thinking about jobs, I already had a rep for running into the law a little. Nothing big, just fights and stuff, but enough to put me off the idea. I always kept Ruby on the straight and narrow, though. She has a big heart and there are some assholes who just love stomping all over that, you know?” Yang’s smile was one of pure pride. “She makes the boys in blue look better just being there.”

Another turn and they were right next to her complex, Yang snagging a space on the sidewalk outside the parking garage that required a permit. Once the hum and cough of the engine faded to silence, Weiss found herself holding her breath before she was suddenly pulled into another kiss, just as passionate as the one outside the restaurant but without any poorly timed interruptions. When they broke apart, that smile was still intact, maybe even a little brighter.

“Have a safe trip up.” Yang said, knuckles brushing against her cheek.

“What do you think is going to happen to me on the way up the elevator?” Weiss asked, lips pursed in amusement as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Hey, I don’t know everything about you yet. For all I know, you’re going to change into your superhero costume and spend the rest of the night saving the city. Busy lawyer job’s a super good cover for playing Bruce Wayne.”

She rolled her eyes, opening up the passenger door. “I’d rather be Wonder Woman.”

Yang scoffed. “ _I’m_  the Amazon here.”

“Batwoman, then. Bruce Wayne is overrated.” With that said, Weiss stepped out of the car, about to close the door when Yang spoke up again.

The blonde was leaning far over in her seat, brow raised. “You read comic books?”

“No, but I’m not entirely culturally illiterate.” She shut the door with a small grin, walking around the car before calling back, knowing Yang could hear her with the sunroof open. “Don’t break your nose before you see me again!”

“No promises, Miss Justice League!” Yang called.

With a squeal of tires that would make every neighbor she had glance in fear out their window, Weiss watched Yang zip back down the street, the static and pop of the radio carrying for a block once it was turned on. The doorman gave her a strange look when she entered the lobby, lingering all the way until she reached the elevator and stepped inside. It wasn’t until setting her purse down on the kitchen counter that Weiss realized that just then was probably the first time she had ever come home smiling.

—

 

 

 

Yes, I know that  _Mei guo ren_ doesn’t mean ‘mild’. That’s the joke.


End file.
